Montgomery Smashing The Stigma

Addiction and Substance Abuse Panel Introduction with JB Whitehouse

• City of Montgomery, Ohio • Season 1 • Episode 17

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So many lives and families are touched by addiction. The City of Montgomery and the Church of the Savior have assembled a panel of five individuals whose lives have been impacted by addiction. Our panelists will share their powerful and compelling journeys to help everyone understand addiction, the challenges of recognizing it, treatment, and the journey to recovery. This emotionally charged event will provide a rare and invaluable opportunity to hear unfiltered stories of addiction, not only from those who have lived through it but also from a mother who watched her child suffer through its grip. We invite you to come hear their stories. They may inspire you for the future.

Today's guest is JB Whitehouse, a former Montgomery resident and panelist. JB shares his story of addiction. Attend the August 28 panel discussion to learn about his recovery and hear the powerful stories from all the panelists on how they overcame the terrible disease. 

Learn more and register at https://www.montgomeryohio.gov/event/addiction-substance-abuse-panel-discussion/.

Amy:

Welcome back to the Smashing the Stigma podcast. I'm your host, Amy Frederick, and joining me is my co-host Connie Gaylor. She's also with the City of Montgomery. Today's special guest is J.B. Whitehouse, a Montgomery resident and panelist for the upcoming August 28th community panel presentation on addiction. Welcome, JB, and thank you for joining us today. We wanted to give our listeners a sneak peek into what they can expect to hear at the panel presentation. Jb, can you give us a little of your background and tell us why it's so important for you to share your personal story?

JB:

Absolutely. So a little bit about my background. Uh, born and raised in Cincinnati. So I was adopted at birth. So I actually grew up in Montgomery and Teenager woods, and, uh, majority of my life I lived there from, you know, when I was an infant, up until I was in my early teens. And, um, from there we moved over to, uh, Remington Road. But what's important in relation to my story and my struggles, specifically, I think is kind of destigmatize the fact that this is an issue surrounding addiction that only affects, you know, certain demographics or certain people, when in reality it affects every single person in every single facet of life. Right? So there is no discrimination that is made on the basis of addiction. Doesn't care where you come from, how you were raised. You know what kind of background that you have. Political affiliations, finances. All of that means absolutely nothing until you have the ability to actually get the help that you need to cement a foundation of recovery. Uh, your life is going to be like mine for a long time, where you're just lost in this dark existence because you can't call it living. And at first, you know, for me personally, I probably started drinking and smoking marijuana in middle school. And primarily we did it because we had older brothers or sisters or cousins, you know, who were in high school, and we would be around them and hanging out with them quite a bit and we saw them do it right. So we thought it was cool. We wanted to be cool too. So we started stealing, you know, beers or little water bottles of liquor from our parents cabinets or, you know, refrigerator and stuff like that, and drinking it with our friends on the weekends. And if we can get marijuana, you know, starting that too. And then throughout the years into early high school that just grew and grew and developed and got worse. So we'd start doing it more frequently. And it was always pretty. It's actually kind of funny because it always seemed like every weekend, you know, somebody had a parent who was out of town and they had the house to themselves, right? So we could, with our group, just kind of flock to whomever was house that might be on any given weekend and, and continue to do what we felt we wanted to do because we had fun. And that's the thing that a lot of people don't understand is This early in my use. I had a lot of fun, and I think anyone who tells you differently is a liar. Frankly, it's just over time, it stops becoming fun. It starts becoming habitual. It starts becoming something that you no longer have any control over. And your actions and your direction in terms of life are then fueled by addiction, and it's beyond your capability of controlling anymore. So that's when it gets how many.

Amy:

How many years would you say you were in addiction?

JB:

Uh, 11 or 12 til I was 23. So the first time that I had any legal consequences with my addiction, I was 16. I think I had my license for maybe a month or two. And, uh, I had been transporting, you know, people, uh, to all, all sorts of parties. And, um, I think it's like a Friday night we went to party after party and I had a Tahoe that had been given to me by one of my cousins. Kind of like hand-me-down car, and I was so stoked to have it. And I was transporting 11 people in a Tahoe all night, filled with beer and empty containers, and went from party to party to party. And at the end of the night, we went back to my buddy's house, and everybody was just kind of hunkering down there and continuing the party, continuing to have fun. His parents weren't home, so we had nothing to worry about on that end. But I got a call from someone saying, hey, do you want to come over here and hang out for a bit? So I said, absolutely, and I ended up heading that way and, uh, went from the far side of Indian Hill up here to actually near Hopewell and Carriage Trail is where this person lived. And I was about to pull into their driveway and I got pulled over, and that was the first time I got arrested. So I had 52 open containers in the car and a host of other, you know, alcohol that I was not old enough to possess and got arrested and was pretty, um, belligerent, you know, was very scared. But that kind of channel its way to aggressive, belligerent behavior. And when the my parents went to the police station to pick me up, um, the chief was like, is this how he normally acts like, is this is this normal for you? And they're like, no, no, no, absolutely not. This is way out of character. And I ended up driving home with my dad. And as we were pulling into their house and their driveway, he was talking about my my new Tahoe or the Tahoe that I got given to me. And he was like, you might as well kiss this thing goodbye because tomorrow we're selling it. And, uh, I said, no, you're not. And some expletives were entered into that statement. And, uh, my dad was a college football player, so a pretty big guy. And we ended up getting out of the car and come to blows, you know, right there in the driveway. And my mother freaked out and called the police again. So, uh, first time I was arrested, I was actually arrested twice in one night by the same police officers. And, uh, instead of taking me back to the station at that time, they took me to juvenile detention, kind of near downtown. And I stayed four nights there. And that was my first kind of run in with the law. But first of many.

Amy:

What did your parents then after you were arrested? Twice, which I still can't. It's hard to wrap your mind around that when you think about your own self. But I mean, when you were 16, what did your parents do? What was the next thing that they did?

JB:

Uh, when I got out of juvenile detention, I was grounded for what was told to me to be forever. And that ended up being legitimately like 6 or 7 months where I would go to school. I played sports, so athletics is a big part of my story. Um, but I would go to school, I'd go to practice, I'd come home and that's it.

Amy:

That kind of discipline work for, you.

JB:

Know, it actually drove me deeper into my addiction. So my parents had, as a lot of people that I grew up with, do had like a basement where they had a television kind of set up area and like a bar for entertaining. If they had friends or family over and I would just retreat down to the basement even on the weekdays. Um, you know, during that time, and just as I look back in hindsight, I was numbing away the things that I was feeling I was always worried about. Obviously, when you're in high school, you're 16 years old. Being cool, being popular is a big deal, right? You have a fear of missing out. You have a fear of, you know, being able to hang out with your friends and not being a part of. Right? So to kind of numb that away and, and the rationalization that I would tell myself is all I'm doing, just making sure my tolerance in terms of alcohol was where I needed to be. So when I got back out and I could go party again with my friends, you know, I wasn't I wasn't losing a step on them. And that's how I rationalized it. But in reality, it was just, uh, masking Asking anxiety, depression and fear of missing out with alcohol. So I would go down there in the weekends, weekdays, and I would drink by myself and I would watch movies, and that took my alcoholism really to the next stage. And that's where I really kind of started going down the wrong path with alcohol, but it just evolved more.

Amy:

Just tell me. I've always heard people say that there was always a rock bottom. What would you say yours was?

JB:

I was homeless, uh, meaning that I had no permanent residence for a year and a half, two years. So I had a car that I would live out of where? I would just, like, couch surf to wherever I could for as long as I could, until I got kicked out, usually for stealing or, you know, whatever action or behavior I exhibited that they no longer wanted in their home. But, um, the last time I drank, I had been staying at my aunt's house, and, uh, she initially told me I could stay there for 48 hours, no more, and I squeezed like 4 or 5 days out of it. And out of that 4 or 5 days, I drank every every drop of alcohol in her house, took every pill, whether it got me high or not. And I remember being in her basement in the bathroom. I had locked myself in with a warm bottle of rum. And I remember just taking shot after shot after shot. I'd imagine I probably took 14 or 15 shots before I blacked out. And I remember taking one shot and then looking up and seeing the mirror in front of me, and I did not recognize the face looking back at me. I knew it was me, but it didn't look like me. You know, I was I was jaundiced, I had a yellowish green tint to my face. I was bloated, just it just did not look like me. And, uh, I had a spiritual experience, as what we call it in terms of, of addiction and recovery at that moment where I heard this voice ask from behind me, it's like. What the hell are you doing? What have you become? And then I blacked out. And then I proceeded to take my car and drive around and do the things that I had done hundreds of times, and escaped death by the skin of my teeth while doing. Um. Mind you, I didn't have a license, nor, you know, did I have, um, I had a record of, like, four DUIs at that point. But, um, when I got back and woke up the next morning, um, my aunt, you know, asked me to come have a conversation with her, and then I can't tell you kind of what that that sparked something within me that was more than just fear. Because at that point I was afraid. But I had a new sense of willingness to try something that I did not have prior to that, to help me save myself from myself. And that was the last, last time I drank.

Amy:

So I think what we want to do is we know that you're a sober man. How long have you been sober?

JB:

13 years.

Amy:

13 years. You're a family man. You have a wife. You have children now, a career. I think we want to save for our panel discussion evening on the 28th. How you turn things around and give hope to other people. How? What worked for you? What could work for them? I think we'll save that for the 28th. But I want to ask you one more question before we leave you. And that is, what would you say to somebody who's kind of on the fence about attending our panel discussion? Why do you think that they should be sitting in that audience that night?

JB:

If they're on the fence about attending the panel, that means that they have someone in their lives that they love either themselves or someone who is in their family, or a close friend who might be kind of going through the things that are going to be the topic of discussion. So in that, I would advise you to come because all it's going to do is give you an education on not only maybe what you're going through right this moment, but also provide solution. Right. So what you can hope to, um, kind of the resources that you can utilize to make sure that you have the ability to address the situations that you're currently facing or that a loved one is facing, and do so in a way that they're going to respond to. Um, you know, it's never going to hurt to be able to get more educated on something that affects nearly every single person in this, in this country in some way or another.

Amy:

I think that's an excellent point. Thank you for your honesty and willingness to collaborate with the city on this very important discussion. Connie, would you like to share more about our other panelists we have for others?

Connie:

Um, so the you know, the four others are three individuals who the lives have been really deeply affected by addiction. Um, a parent and then also to that that suffered with addiction on their own as well as other co-occurring, you know, conditions as well. Um, and then we do have a final panelist who is a clinician from Bright View Health that will be there to help us to understand the medical side, the treatment side with counseling and to have some science to back up. A lot of the things that we'll be learning about from JB and the other panelists as well. So it's going to be a great night with some really great conversation. I believe that it's going to be very, uh, emotional. It's going to be raw. But those are the kind of things that that really help us to resonate. I do want to share just some final details. So again, it's Thursday, August 28th. It's at the church of the Savior, located at 8005 Pfeiffer Road here in Montgomery. Doors open at 630 and the presentation begins at seven. Um, we can go to Montgomery, ohio.gov to register. We just invite everybody to come to, you know, just to hear not only JB's story, but the other people as well.

Amy:

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing the rest of your story, because that's a lot to turn around. And I think it's wonderful that you've managed to turn that around and give hope for others. Absolutely. That's what we want to bring to this evening. We want to educate others about addiction, and we want to bring hope to the future.